On C. G. Jung

I’ve been thinking a lot about theorists, philosophers, and psychologists and their own personal struggles, many of which paved the way for their own careers and lifestyle. C. G. Jung was no exception. He followed in the footsteps of his mentor and “surrogate” father, Sigmund Freud. However, he struggled with Freud’s central meaning points based on sexual desires and he challenged this notion. He was outcast as a young psychoanalyst and fell into a deep depression, retreating into his home in Lake Zurich and into himself throughout World War I.

A true introvert, Jung was not interested in following others and, subsequently, not interested in people who followed him. However, he could not deny that people sought his theories and words and these same people were captivated by his thoughts on individualism. After Jung died, his work continued to influence psychology and the world today. He was able to effect the field of personality with his influence on the Myers-Briggs test, a personality test taken by over 1 million people a year. His legacy of terms such as “the collective unconscioius”, “introvert” and “extrovert” have become so regularly used that he has become part of our world’s own collective unconscious.

His genious was found in a sense of the genious wanting to find himself. He endured struggles and riducule in order to stand up for that which he believed, not the status quo. This is perhaps why I admire him the most out of almost every contemporary psychologist this world has produced. Perhaps I can relate to his struggle, his personal journey that I feel I’ve walked a number of times in my own early career. He reminds me of a personification of Hesse’s Sidhartha, a man who went into the wild of civilization to search for ultimate meaning and, in the end, finding it right in front of him, where he started in the beginning.